By making connections with older businessmen and merchants, he was able to buy two shares in ships transporting guns from Europe to the Americas.

He returned to the United States and settled in Baltimore, which at the time was a quickly growing city with many opportunities in trade and business, thanks to its harbor and Mid-Atlantic location.

He married into the respectable Spear-Smith family and built a grand townhouse on South Street next to his counting house.

[7] He was a slave owner who owned several plantations and country estates in the Baltimore area, along with buildings and lots within the city, and branches of his business that reached all the way to the European continent.

He wrote, "The conduct of my daughter Betsey has through life been so disobedient that in no instance has she every consulted my opinions or feelings; indeed, she has caused me more anxiety and trouble than all my other children put together, and her folly and misconduct have occasioned me a train of expense that first and last has cost me much money," and left her only a few properties, all of which totaled approximately $10,000.